Your clients are undoubtedly important for the success of your business, but what’s more important is your workforce. As a leader, your priority is your clients and your employees. As Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, famously said, “if you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” A happy and engaged workforce is loyal to your company, productive, and works hard towards achieving organizational goals.

Unfortunately, only 21% of employees are engaged at their workplace, according to a report presented by Gallup. With this, it is evident that either the employers don’t recognize the importance of employee engagement or they don’t have a solid employee engagement strategy.

Let us understand a few reasons why employee engagement is important to your business.

Improve employee retention

Are you aware of the great resignation? The wave of employee resignations that began in early 2021 is known as the great resignation. Many workers quit their jobs, and businesses were left in turmoil.

Human resource is the most important resource you have. In order to retain them, you have to come up with a good employee engagement strategy.

Many businesses believe that increasing salaries alone will suffice to retain employees, but if those workers aren’t demonstrating any enthusiasm or/and commitment to their work, the return on your investment will undoubtedly be lower. Hence working on employee engagement should be your top priority.

If this reasoning doesn’t make sense to you, perhaps the statistics will: this study found that organizations with an engaged workforce have 24% less employee turnover than those with a lower level of employee engagement.

Employee turnover is expensive to deal with. Consider the money you spent advertising the vacancy, interviewing applicants, onboarding them, and providing them with training. If your staff begin to leave your organization soon after they start, all of this investment will have been for nothing.

Increase productivity

Employees who give their minimum effort to complete their duties have always been in companies. Their lack of enthusiasm now has a name- quiet quitting. Such employees are disengaged and only working because they need a source of income.

This minimum behavior will not help you take your business to the next level. We need productive employees who make the best out of their time and contribute significantly towards the company’s success.

Working on employee engagement can help your employees be productive and enjoy their work. An engaged workforce can resolve queries faster and complete more tasks in a short amount of time.

Better employee engagement also reduces absenteeism and ensures the completion of all tasks according to the schedule.

Better customer service

An engaged employee has a sense of loyalty toward the company. There is no one better than such employees to talk with your customers. They can efficiently communicate the benefits of your product and services to the customers.

Make your business more profitable.

When your workforce has passionate employees, you can reach higher heights. Your employees will help you win more clients and get the best yearly results. More involved employees are attentive, efficient, and aware of client needs. They also pay closer attention to procedures and rules. The actions of a highly engaged workforce contribute to a 23% improvement in profitability.

How to improve employee engagement?

Now that we know how important employee engagement is, let’s see a few ways to improve employee engagement.

Host off-site engagement activities

Many businesses now provide a variety of entertaining and exciting employee engagement events. These are designed to enable interaction amongst your staff members outside the office premise. Your staff members improve as team players and can communicate openly about work and life-related issues.

You can arrange a fun event for your staff members at the office, take them on a therapeutic trip like animal therapy, go hiking, or go to a resort. Whatever you decide, be sure to explain the details of these engagement initiatives clearly. If your employees are aware of your engagement activities and are encouraged to participate, such initiatives will all be successful. According to a Forbes report, only 25% of the employees interviewed feel that their employer does a good job of informing them about engagement possibilities.

You can take help from a corporate event organizer to help you with such fun engagement activities.

Recognize their efforts

Acknowledging your employee’s efforts doesn’t always have to be loud. You can arrange a small award function and award your employees. Encourage your managers to appreciate the employees whenever they do good work. Make efforts to praise them in front of the staff. By doing so, you not only make your employees happy but also motivate others to work harder.

Offer learning and development opportunities.

Many people show less engagement at work because they feel there is nothing new to learn and improve their skills. Hence, providing employee learning opportunities is also a good employee engagement strategy.

Exchange feedbacks

Talk to your employees and ask for their feedback. This will help you understand what they are experiencing and expecting from you. Also, give them constructive feedback on their work. Exchanging feedback also enables you to develop a healthy work culture.

Bottom Line

Employee engagement is becoming a bigger concern day by day. Employees value job satisfaction more than salary. As an HR or business owner, you should develop a robust employee engagement strategy to retain your valuable talents.